Only.me80 #6: Comments 1-2 on MacArthur's "Limited Atonement" Sermon

Okay, so here are the first two footnotes (my additional comments) on the John MacArthur sermon I quoted in part 4 of this series inspired by a comment from a Calvinist reader called Only.me80.  [Click here for part 1 and part 2 and part 3 and part 5 of this series.]

*1 MacArthur said: "[An unlimited atonement and the free-will ability of humans to choose to believe in Jesus] is not what the church has historically believed, but that is what the present version of the superficial church believes"

Notice the manipulative-shaming, the accusation of "You're a 'superficial' Christian if you believe that Jesus died for all people and that we choose to accept or reject the gift of eternal life." (paraphrase)  

Which is, apparently, "most people in the church."  According to special, unique, high-and-mighty MacArthur, most of us Christians are "superficial" because most of us Christians believe in free-will and an unlimited atonement.  

Hmm, I wonder, isn't it kinda telling that most Christians read the Bible in a non-Calvinist way?  Isn't it kinda strange that most Christians have supposedly severely misunderstood (for centuries) the Bible's basic message, the gospel?  Isn't it kinda surprising that God would write His Word in such a way that most of us desperately need the help of a few unique people to teach us how to understand the Bible properly, to train us over many months to see Calvinism in the Bible?

Hmm, maybe - and I'm just spitballing here - but maybe it's not that most people are wrong.  Maybe it's that most people read it in a non-Calvinist way because that's the way it's supposed to be read.  Maybe God wrote it that way because that's how He intended it to be understood.  

And so maybe, just maybe, it's not that we non-Calvinists are "superficial," but it's that we're simply taking God at His Word, reading the Bible in a plain, face-value, commonsense, non-Calvinist way because that's how it's supposed to be read... instead of doing what Calvinists do, which is adding deeper, hidden, secondary Calvinist-layers to it that alter, negate, or contradict the plain, face-value, commonsense understanding of it, creating "mysteries" that aren't really there, resulting in hundreds of pages of convoluted twists and turns in Systematic Theology books which really just end in "Well, we can't understand it because it's a mystery, so live with the tension.  Who are you to question God anyway?"

I'm just sayin'.  Sometimes the majority is right.  Sometimes "most people in the church" understand things a certain way for a very good reason: Because that's the right way to understand it. 

*2 MacArthur also said: "The doctrine of man’s inability necessitates the doctrine of God’s divine invasion... He must give repentance, He must give faith... And He does it to those whom He has chosen."  

This "doctrine of man's inability and doctrine of God's invasion ('irresistible grace')" is a purely Calvinist concept, one bad idea giving birth to another bad idea.  

Of course, it's not wrong to believe that we couldn't find God or believe in Him unless He made it possible by revealing Himself, putting evidence of Himself in nature and in our hearts, paying for our sins, calling to us all, and giving us all the ability to find Him and believe in Him.  This is how the God of the Bible "invades." 

Acts 17:27: “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us,"  

But this is very different from the Calvinist way where Calvi-god gives specific prechosen people faith to cause them (and only them) to believe in him.  Very different!

And see how Calvinism's bad definition of "depravity/death" as "inability" means that Calvi-Jesus didn't die for all people or offer salvation to all people.  Calvi-people are so "depraved/dead" that they can't choose to believe on their own ("total depravity"), which means that Calvi-god must choose/cause who believes ("Unconditional election" and "Irresistible grace"), which means that Calvi-Jesus only died for those who were prechosen for salvation ("Limited atonement"), because Calvi-Jesus wouldn't waste his blood on those predestined for hell.

Steven Lawson (in the article "Salvation is of the Lord."  This article has been removed from the Ligonier Ministries website.  I'm guessing because of his somewhat-recent fall from grace?  So see this copy of it instead: TULIP and The Doctrines of Grace | Effectual Grace): 

"Apart from grace, our minds are darkened by sin, unable to understand the truth... Our wills are dead, unable to choose the good... In their unregenerate state, no one seeks after God... (And so therefore) In eternity past, the Father chose a people in Christ who would be saved.  Before time began, God elected many from among mankind whom He purposed to save from His wrath. This selection was not based upon any foreseen faith in those whom He chose... 

(And so therefore) As a sin-bearing sacrifice, Jesus died a substitutionary death in the place of God’s elect.  On the cross, He propitiated the righteous anger of God toward the elect.... Jesus’ death did not merely make all mankind potentially savable.  Nor did His death simply achieve a hypothetical benefit that may or may not be accepted.  Neither did His death merely make all mankind redeemable.  Instead, Jesus actually redeemed a specific people through His death, securing and guaranteeing their salvation.  Not a drop of Jesus’ blood was shed in vain.  He truly saved all for whom He died...

At the divinely appointed time, the Spirit removes from each elect person his unbelieving heart of stone, hardened and dead in sin, and replaces it with a believing heart of flesh, responsive and alive unto God.  The Spirit implants eternal life within the spiritually dead soul.  He grants the chosen men and women the gifts of repentance and faith, enabling them to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.*... This call from the Spirit is effectual, meaning the elect will certainly respond when it is given.  They will not finally resist it.**  Thus, the doctrine of effectual calling is sometimes called the doctrine of irresistible grace."

[* In Calvinism, it's not belief in Jesus that saves, but it's election.  Believing in Calvi-Jesus is the result of having been chosen, saved, and born-again/regenerated.  It's the final step.  But this is a reversal of what the Bible says, where first we believe in Jesus (and anyone can), and then, as a result of our free-will belief, we are saved, born-again, and regenerated.  And for the record, biblically, faith is not the gift; eternal life is.  See this post.

** "Will not finally resist it."  Calvinists say things like "We cannot resist doing what He predestined us to do.  But God doesn't 'force' us to sin or reject Him.  We do it willingly."  But this is deceptive and disingenuous because they have a very different idea of "force" than we do (and they know it).  

You see, in Calvinism, Calvi-god determines which nature we have (unregenerated or regenerated), and that nature contains built-in desires we must obey.  And so everyone who gets the unregenerated nature must obey the irresistible built-in desire to sin and reject him.  That's the only desire Calvi-god created them with, and so it's the only thing they can "want" to do, which means it's the only thing they can "choose" to do.  And, as Calvinist logic goes, since they "wanted" and "chose" to do it, he didn't have to physically "force" them to do it.  They "willingly" obeyed the desire he created them with, because he preprogrammed their wills to want to do it.  

Calvinists do not call that "force"... but everyone else does.  We say that if Calvi-god created us with pre-set desires which cause us to only want/only be able to choose to do what he predestined us to do - with no option or ability to determine, change, or resist the desire he created us with - then it is definitely "forcing" us to do what we do.  It's definitely not us actually "willing" to do anything on our own, but it's Calvi-god determining and controlling what we are "willing" to do, making us only willing to do what he predestined us to do, even if it's sinning, doing evil, and rejecting him.  

So don't fall for the Calvinist's "God doesn't force us to sin or reject Him, but we willingly do it because that's what we want to do."  Instead, try asking them something like this: "And why do we want to do it?  Can we resist the desire to do it?  Can we want to do something else?"  And see what they say.  You'll eventually realize that they really do mean "force."]

And so because of all these unbiblical concepts, definitions, and beliefs that make up the foundation of Calvinism, Calvinists must then find other ways to interpret all the many "all men/the world/whosoever" verses as being anything but "all men," spinning and twisting them to make them apply only to "some" people, the Calv-elect.

A.W. Pink (Doctrine of Election): "... it is unmistakably evident that the 'all men' God wills to be saved and for whom Christ died are all men without regard to national distinctions."

R.C. Sproul (in Chosen by God): “The world for whom Christ died cannot mean the entire human family. It must refer to the universality of the elect (people from every tribe and nation)….” 

My ex-pastor's December 2, 2018 sermon on God's love for sinners: "For God so loved the world... What is 'the world'?  Well, let me tell you what it's not.  Lots of people think it's a head-count of every single human being.  That's really not what John is talking about.  He's not talking about a head-count here.  In John's theology, the world is not a head-count; it is a realm...a dark realm of sin, evil, rebellion, corruption, and wickedness."

But Calvinism's grave mistake is that depravity and spiritual death do not mean "inability to believe," as Calvinists think.  But they simply mean that we are all affected by sin, all separated from God because of our sins and unable to work our way to heaven, and so God needed to provide a way for us to be saved.  

And He did: He provided Jesus's sacrificial death to pay for all of our sins, so that He could offer us all the free gift of eternal life, and we all have the chance and ability to believe in Jesus, accept His offer of eternal life, and be saved.

So eternal life is truly available to all, but God gave us the free-will to decide for ourselves to accept or reject it.  And many people use their free-will to reject Jesus's sacrifice instead of accepting it.  (If we continue to resist and reject God, He can hand us over to our hard heart, hardening us in our self-chosen unbelief.  This is what "hardens" means in the Bible: Not that God pre-chooses who doesn't believe and prevents them from believing, but that He can permanently seal people in the self-chosen unbelief if they resist Him for too long.)  

This is why there are people in hell, not because they weren't loved or died for or because they were predestined to hell for God's glory, as Calvinism teaches.

If Calvinists would simply go back to the beginning of their theological chain of ideas and correct their unbiblical idea of "depravity/spiritual death means inability to believe," it would solve so many of the problems that they created after that.

But instead of doing that, they keep creating new problems, errors, and heresies as they try to explain, rationalize, and cover for their previous ones.  Error upon error.  All because they refuse to recognize or admit that their foundational beliefs are wrong.  

Bonus: Some additional notes on "total depravity" from my post TULIP's Totally-Depraved Doctrine" (edited a bit):

Calvinism's TULIP petals are all built on each other, one after the next, and it all starts with "total depravity" (their bad definition of it).  And so if they can get you to buy into their view of total depravity as "total inability," then they can easily get you to buy into their whole TULIP, ensuring that you will become a Calvinist.

Grover Gunn (A Short Explanation and Defense of the Doctrines of Grace): "... the five points are logically related such that any one of them implies the other four..."  

["Logically related" is really a backhanded way of saying that men created the Calvinist theological system one step at a time.  They started with an idea, then came to certain conclusions based on that idea which led them to a new related idea, and so on and so forth... and then they found out-of-context Bible verses they could use to try to back up their ideas.  And so it all appears solid, consistent, and biblical.  But they really just used human logic to create and "prove" their doctrines, instead of finding them spelled out clearly and plainly in the Bible.]

R.C. Sproul (Total Depravity part 1): "... if a person really embraces the doctrine of total depravity, the other four points in this five-point system more or less fall in line. They become corollaries of this first point."

Heidelberg Theological Seminary ("The Doctrine of Unconditional Election: Based on Total Depravity"):  "[These doctrines] are dependent on each other and are welded together as the links of one chain..."

Steven Lawson ("TULIP and the Doctrines of Grace"): "In reality, these five doctrines of grace form one comprehensive body of truth concerning salvation... To embrace any one of the five necessitates embracing all five."

Loraine Boettner ("The Five Points of Calvinism"): "These are technically known as 'The Five Points of Calvinism,' and they are the main pillars upon which the superstructure rests... Furthermore, these are not isolated and independent doctrines but are so inter-related that they form a simple, harmonious, self-consistent system; and the way in which they fit together as component parts of a well-ordered whole has won the admiration of thinking men of all creeds. [And has deceived many into thinking that it's "sound doctrine."]  Prove any one of them true and all the others will follow as logical and necessary parts of the system.  Prove any one of them false and the whole system must be abandoned.  They are found to dovetail perfectly one into the other."

This is why their theology appears rock-solid and holds together so tightly: Each point is built on the previous point and flows into the next point, starting with their view of "total depravity" (and I'd add "sovereignty" and "spiritual death").  And so they all support and "prove" each other, making each of them an absolutely necessary component of the whole.  And out-of-context Bible verses are applied all along the way, creating the illusion that it's all biblical.  (But none of it is actually built on in-context Bible verses or biblical truth.)  

And so it all appears solid, consistent, logical, and biblical, and it slowly, gently, systematically leads you from one point to the next to the next... until you're a solid Calvinist who's surprised (and yet "humbled") that you now believe that our good God ordains, causes, orchestrates, controls all sin, evil, and unbelief for His glory and pleasure.  

"Amen, hallelujah, let's praise Him for causing sin and reprobating people to hell!"

Vincent Cheung ("The Problem of Evil"): "God is the only one who possesses intrinsic worth, and if he decides that the existence of evil will ultimately serve to glorify him, then the decree is by definition good and justified.  One who thinks that God's glory is not worth the death and suffering of billions of people has too high an opinion of himself and humanity... Christians should have no trouble affirming all of this, and those who find it difficult to accept what Scripture explicitly teaches should reconsider their spiritual commitment, to see if they are truly in the faith.”  

Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “All things that happen in all the world at any time and in all history… come to pass because God ordained them.  Even sin– the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history… Foreordination means God’s sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe… He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen... He has foreordained everything… even sin...”

John MacArthur (Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God): "Well of course; [God] controls everything.  He’s in complete control of evil.  The devil is God’s devil; he’s totally controlled by God.  The world is controlled by God.  Every single movement, as R.C. said, of every molecule is controlled by God, and a whole lot of it is evil." 

  

But biblically, depravity/spiritual death has nothing to do with ability or inability to want, seek, believe in God.  It just has to do with the fact that sin has affected us all and separated us all from God, and so we all need help getting to heaven.  We cannot earn or work our way there.  All we can do - all we have to do - is believe in Jesus, accepting His sacrificial death in our place.  And if we don't, then we choose to pay for our sin ourselves, remaining separated from God forever (hell). 

[Note: Contrary to what Calvinists think, God does not view "belief in Jesus" as a "working for salvation" thing: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.'  Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.  However, to a man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.  David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:" (Romans 4:3-6)

God is contrasting Abraham's belief/faith/trust in Him with those who "work" for their justification and righteousness, who try to earn/work their way to Him.  He's saying that "belief/faith" is not the same thing as "working for your salvation," and that belief/faith is what we must do to be saved.  God has done all the work to make salvation possible for us, and all He asks - all He requires - is that we accept it, that we open up our hands and receive it and say "Thank you. I believe."  And that's not "working for salvation."  Unless you're a Calvinist.] 

And so given Calvinism's unbiblical view of depravity/spiritual death as "inability to believe in Jesus," the two big questions to consider are these: 

One: If the Bible says that it's our responsibility/choice to believe in Jesus, that it's the one thing we must do to be saved... but Calvinists say that it's something we can't do to be saved... then can anyone really be saved under honest Calvinist preaching?  

And two: Who do you think profits from spreading the idea that people cannot decide to believe in Jesus to be saved, when God Himself says that we must believe in Jesus to be saved?

Calvinists accuse us non-Calvinists of rejecting Calvinism because we supposedly want the freedom of choice, or we don't want to submit to God's "sovereignty," or we put man above God, or we ignore/reject what the Bible says, etc.  

But the real reason why we - I - oppose Calvinism is because it's unbiblical, severely damaging God's Word, God's character, the gospel, and, consequently, people's faith and eternal souls.

And the Calvinist's overemphasis on "total depravity" (their incorrect understanding of it) is just one of the especially destructive things Calvinists do (along with making God the cause of sin, evil, and unbelief, essentially turning God into Satan; presenting evil as good and injustice as justice; making God unjust for punishing us for what He predestined/caused; making Him dishonest and deceptive for saying one thing but meaning another, for commanding one thing but causing the opposite; slamming the door of heaven on most people, declaring them unsavable, unforgivable, beyond hope, beyond God's grace, claiming that God never really loved them and that He created them simply so He could predestine them to eternal hell for His pleasure and glory, etc.).

You see, Calvinists insist that we must realize and admit how terribly depraved and wretched we are before we can be saved.  

As my ex-pastor said in his July 2018 sermon on the doctrine of sovereign election: "Once you grasp the...wickedness, evil, corruption, rebellion of the human heart, the real question is not 'Why didn't God elect everybody?'  The real question is 'Why does He elect anybody?'... And if you're unsure if you're saved, if you're elect, ask yourself some questions.  [Here he lists some "signs" you're elect, but then he ends by saying to ask yourself this:] 'Am I the worst sinner I know?'  If you're saved, the answer is 'Yes, you're the worst sinner you know.'"

And from a February 2016 sermon: "All people...are universally evil, spiritually ignorant, rebellious, wayward, worthless, morally corrupt, evil-mouthed, deceitful, full of bitterness, violent, miserable, and have no fear of God in their eyes... We are depraved down to the core... utterly saturated, permeated, and consumed by corruption... Why does nobody seek God?  Because no one is able to seek God on their own, and the reason goes back to total depravity... We are born slaves to sin, wickedness, depravity.... You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know."  

"If you're saved, the answer is 'Yes, you're the worst sinner you know.'"

"You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know."

So in order to understand the gospel and be saved (which, in Calvinism, really just means that in order for the Calv-elect to wake up one day and realize that they've always been saved, that Calvi-god injected them with faith to make them believe), they must first see themselves as the worst sinner they know - and they can't come to God until they do.

I mean, seriously, think about how much this hurts more than helps in evangelism and how it exposes one of the biggest problems in Calvinism's gospel (besides the obvious fact that Calvinists have reversed the order of belief in Jesus and being saved/born again and have mis-defined belief as "working for salvation"):

Calvinists have taken a biblical truth about the gospel, about salvation, and stretched it to such extremes that it's not biblical anymore.  And so instead of the biblical truth that mankind is sinful and that we must admit that we're sinners in order to be saved, now it's "All people...are universally evil, spiritually ignorant, rebellious, wayward, worthless, morally corrupt, evil-mouthed, deceitful, full of bitterness, violent, miserable, and have no fear of God in their eyes... You don't understand the gospel until you realize you're the worst sinner you know."

And most critically and egregiously, this goes against Scripture's truth that all it takes is one sin to keep us out of heaven.

James 2:10: "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it."  

The Bible's point here is that all it takes is one sin to be a sinner, to become separated from God because of sin, to need a Savior.  Because, biblically, it's not about being the worst sinner or about our level of badness, but it's about being imperfect.  And all honest normal people will admit that they are imperfect, that they've sinned at least once.  And if people can understand this - that even one sin makes you a sinner in need of Jesus; that it's not about how bad you are or about being extremely depraved, violent, wretched - then how easy it is to come to Jesus!  How much more willing people will be to admit they need Him! 

But Calvinism demands that people admit that they are wretchedly depraved, the worst sinner of all, and that it's what earns them hell and makes them need a Savior.  

This raises the bar much farther than God does!  

And no decent honest person would - or should - admit to something as outrageous as what Calvinism demands them to admit.  No decent honest person who evaluates themselves fairly would call themselves "the worst sinner they know," a totally wicked, purely evil, no-good, God-hating, wretched, depraved sinner.  (And so, essentially, Calvinism convinces people that they have to lie about themselves - to stretch the truth about themselves and view themselves as the absolute worst scum of the earth - in order to get into heaven, that it's what God expects from them.😕)

Can you not see how deceptive and evil it is to switch the condition for deserving hell and needing a Savior from committing one sin to being the worst, most depraved sinner there is!?!  How many people will this actually keep from coming to God, to salvation, because they know they're not that bad?  

Can you not see how this actually works against evangelism, against God's Truth, against wooing people to Jesus?  Because it's demanding more out of people than God does, going beyond what Scripture teaches, replacing Scripture with their own ridiculously-extreme ideas.  (It's like they're virtue-signaling, like "look at what great hard-core Christians we are to believe such things!")  Raising the bar that God set actually makes more people resistant to Jesus than attracted to Jesus.  It destroys God's character, truth, Word, and gospel, which loses more people than it wins.  

But although we are not all at the same extreme level of wickedness, rottenness, and depravity, we are all at the same level of being separated from God because of sin, at least one sin, and so we all need a Savior.  And that's all we need to admit.

How little God asks us to admit about ourselves in order to be saved!

But, oh, how much Calvinism does!  Raising the bar God set, repelling more people than it wins.

And I wonder: Who's behind a switch like this, behind raising and lowering the bars God sets, behind switching the goalposts and contradicting/twisting what God clearly said?